This was scarcely punishment to Sidney. He hated the vanities of court life with his whole heart, and when he was thus dismissed, he was as one from whom heavy shackles had been struck. He spent the time of his exile with his beloved sister, the Countess of Pembroke, and while at her home, wrote some of his best poems.
The queen forgave Sidney, all too soon for him, for he had to be persuaded, nay, almost forced back into her silken fetters. The Earl of Leicester was already reinstated in her Majesty's good-will when Sidney came back, with reluctant grace, to be again an ornament of her court.
But he was not an ornament merely. He was soon elected to Parliament, and through his fearless and untiring zeal did much toward making England great.
Sidney was now becoming more and more prominent as a literary man, and was closely associated with Raleigh, Lyly, Hooker, Christopher Marlowe, Sir Francis Bacon, and Edmund Spenser. He was also one of the first to patronize a rising young actor and playwright by the name of Will Shakespeare.
In 1583 Philip Sidney was knighted, and became "Sir Philip Sidney, knight, of Penshurst." This was, however, but a poor acknowledgment of his virtues, his high attainments, and his services to the State. He was appointed by the queen to several minor offices, but he was never given what he merited at her hands—so much for being better and greater than those who have the power to reward.
For some years Sidney's friends had been pressing him to marry, for they felt that it would be an irrevocable loss to England for such a man to die without sons to perpetuate his talents and sterling qualities. But Sidney for a long time turned a deaf ear to their persuasions. He had loved one woman passionately, and she had become the wife of another man. Since that time he had paid devoted attention to none, though he always held the gentler sex in deepest respect.
Considering his natural attractions, and the exalted place he had won for himself among both the writers and the statesmen of the day, it is not to be wondered at that he was much sought after. One chronicle tells us that "many noble ladies ventured as far as modesty would permit to signify their affections for him."
Sidney himself thought it his duty to marry, and in the fall of 1583 took to wife the daughter of his old friend, Sir Francis Walsingham. The queen objected bitterly, being selfish enough to want her courtier's whole attention; but she finally relented. She afterwards stood godmother to Sidney's only child—a daughter—who was named for herself.
Sidney's married life was a very happy one. Frances Walsingham made him a good wife, and he was very tenderly attached to her.
Always jealous for his native country, Sidney now became much aroused by the continued success of Spain in the New World. The then recent discoveries in America, and the consequent advancement of the power of Philip II., were a menace to the political prestige of England. Sidney had been quick to perceive this, and had been stirred to a keen interest in English colonization in the New World. He rightly believed that the surest means of retarding the growth of the power of Spain was to plant in the New World colonies of English-speaking people. Disappointed in his desire to join in the warfare in the Netherlands against King Philip, he conceived a great scheme for crippling that monarch's power in America and on the high seas, and he threw himself into the project with his whole heart.